


Pulling the thread

by leo_minor



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst, Attempt at Humor, Based on a Tumblr Post, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes-centric, Canon-Typical Violence, Light Angst, M/M, Museums, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Recovered Memories, starts of with angst and gets lighter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 06:30:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15528207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leo_minor/pseuds/leo_minor
Summary: Freed of HYDRA's control, Bucky tries to reconstruct his past. Every museum brings back a new memory. The old flat he used to share with Steve awakens many - too many, it seems, because the displays there are starting to look a little historically inaccurate, in his humble opinion.





	Pulling the thread

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a Tumblr post by user what-thefucky-bucky, in which Bucky went back to his and Steve's old apartment-turned-museum to try and remember, until he started pointing out inaccuracies. I hope I did it justice !

If he pushed what little of his memory he could reach as far as possible, he found a void of darkness. Nothing before - and it had seemed at the time like there would be nothing after it, either. It had been an infinity of black, frozen in time, silent and cold. Cold.  
  
Yes, while in the midst of the absence of anything and everything, it had appeared there was no getting through it. He had been stuck, he thought, in place and time, blind and bound. He must have pulled through, though, in some way or another, because there were memories that came after the void. The darkness, thick as ink, didn't quite disappear, but it was joined by several colors that, through association, made him sick to this day. There had been the silver of metal, part of him, part of everything he touched; it had shone in the light, limp by his side or stabbed through someone's heart. Red, of course, deep scarlet that was stamped permanently to his side, obsessive, precise. Sometimes the red was on his shoes; more often it was on his hands, dripping. Drip, drip, drip. He remembered the sound. And the screams.  
  
He had thought, for the longest while, that black, red and silver would be the only things that inhabited his mind. The mission was black, the blood was red, the knife was silver. He had thought that this would be his life, and to his empty, shocked (in more ways than one) consciousness it didn't seem to be a problem. It hadn't been a problem, not until something - no, someone ! - else flooded in and perturbed what little balance he had gained in being shoved to the ground day after day.  
  
If he had had a clear mind at the time, he would have known better than to ask. He would have bitten his tongue and kept it to himself, that sense of knowing, of strange familiarity. It wasn't in the orders to communicate details about every face he recognized; not that he recognized many, not that he recognized any, because before the void, there was a wall, and his view of what might have flourished before the pain began was blocked permanently. The man, though, he knew. From before. From beyond the wall. But he had asked, he had spoken, and the memory had been ripped from his grasp with such brute force that it left his mind ringing.  
  
This didn't stop him, though, from recognizing the same face, the same man again. Less sentiment - perhaps the electric blue that had whipped him into compliance had something to do with that - but that same sense of I-know-you-from-before. He had been sent to kill him, the target, the man who called him Bucky and, despite his hits, his attempts to fulfill the damn mission, spoke to him with such a soft tone. He wouldn't have described it as intimate, but it felt personal, it reached him, and it shook his brain back into freedom. Or what little of it he had left to steal back.  
  
He had saved Steve Rogers without remembering his name; only that he knew him, he had known him, they had shared some kind of connection. A part of his mind said he was important to him, another shouted it did not know why. He saved him anyway and left him there because, well, what reason was there to stay ? He was a complete stranger, on this side of the wall. Perhaps he ought to let the sense of familiarity go.  
  
He didn't, however, mostly because he couldn't. Captain America's face was everywhere. He tried to keep a low profile, not get himself flagged, for the red and the black and the silver lied not - but he took the time to visit a few museums, learn a little more. Chase his impression, his strong instinct. It took a while, of course, to revive what had been shot down, and many times he had to read and read again. Part of his journey, following this thread, had been to find out who he was, or rather who he had been. The information was there, but he would easily have missed it. He could hardly recognize himself, on that tape, smiling softly, laughing with the man - with his friend. He looked so happy and unmarked, so radiant standing next to Steve, and these were things he thought he never might be again. He might have walked right past, but the text on the wall said Bucky, just like the man had, and he read on. One o' seventh, the Howling Commandos. Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes.  
  
Fragments had begun to return to him, slowly, and they didn't seem to be fleeting ones. Not bits of paper that flew past him and disappeared, rather pieces of a jigsaw so big he couldn't even picture it. The parts were tiny - sometimes it was a sound, a shout, a cheer, some music. Sometimes a picture, frozen frame. Steve beaten and sweaty in an alleyway. Dancing. The science fairs. The girls. They were blurrier. Had his attention not been on them ?  
  
He was starting, step by step, to put his past together.  
  
Most of the museums he had visited, now. Memorized. One, however, he had put to the side. It was in the margin of the notebook, circled in red. A brighter, more hopeful red. He could have visited it first, of course; it had been one of the first he'd found. But he'd felt some kind of responsibility towards it. He had to remember at least a little, first, because his visit would be wasted if not. It was a visit he could not waste.  
  
"Come visit !" the pamphlet said in obnoxiously bright letters, "Second World War Home of Heroic Avenger Captain America and War Hero Bucky Barnes !" There were some classic marketing pictures which told you nothing at all, opening times and some special free entry dates. He'd highlighted those - where you're on the run, money makes itself scarce.  
  
One was tomorrow, and only a five or so minute walk away from his current residence. (He had settled into a small apartment that cost him as little as an apartment could - he didn't need much anyway, he planned to move away further, to hide himself completely, leave the country if he could save up. It was discreet, and the building was mostly empty. Convenient.) He flipped to a new page in his notebook and flagged it with a little post-it on the edge. Just a habit he remembered having - only he'd used newspaper, at the time. More than half of the booklet was filled with pictures, mostly of Steve, or other people he was said to have associated with. With memories he had back, or was on the way of having back. He figured it might be the right time to visit, so tomorrow it would be.  
  
He closed to notebook and stuffed it in his pocket. For tomorrow.  
  
  
  
The building wore the same guise of familiarity as Steve had.  
  
It was 9 am and the sky was still sulking; the poor lighting amplified the stains and moss that had spread, and made the walls look ancient. As ancient as him, he thought dryly, and crossed the street. The receptionist gave him one of the strangest looks he had ever received (probably because he did, kind of, in fact, look like a tramp and this kind of place was used to better dressed people) but, to his relief, didn't comment on her impression.  
  
"The guided visit starts at nine-thirty," she informed him in a crisp voice that was trying very, very hard to be kind. She passed him his ticket - raising her eyebrows at the sight of his hands, because, surely, wearing gloves in the early wakes of September wasn't the most common of habits - and nodded a little towards the doorway. "You're free to wander about, though. Just go by the rules. No touching, no food inside, no pictures."  
  
He gave her a nod of thanks and wandered away from her desk. The reception had been stripped of its original furniture and decorations, but he could almost, almost picture what it had been like all those years ago. Like a word on the tip of his tongue, the images refused to come, but were on the brink. He hoped things tipped his way. He pulled out his notebook, flipped to the flagged page, and fitted the ticket inside.  
  
Time to go chase some memories, then, he decided, and went through the doorway.  
  
The apartment had three rooms; a bathroom, a bedroom and a living room, with a built in kitchen. Only the last two were available to see, apparently, because there was a sign there that forbade visitors from entering. That was alright - he didn't expect a bathtub would tell him that much about his life. He decided he might as well start with the living room, since it was spread out in front of him, ready to be explored.  
  
He pulled out a pen, took its cap off with his teeth and opened his notebook again. On the blank page he drew roughly the room's disposition, and advanced towards the first sign.  
  
"The Living Room," it started, in bold letters, and he already found himself thinking it wouldn't teach him much. No matter. He read on. "This is where, before the war, our two heroes would lounge and rest. To your left, an armchair, supposedly Captain America's. In the 1940s, it..." His eyes blurred over the historic details and paced until he spotted his name. "Sergent Barnes was said to have preferred the couch, to your right."  
  
He looked up, of course, and nearly snorted.  
  
The sofa on display could only be described as ridiculous, and he remembered enough by then to know that he would never have allowed such a hideous thing in his home, even as a joke. Whatever they draped over it was flowery, bright and ostentatious - he turned his back on it with a shake of his head.  
  
This wasn't the only thing that wasn't quite right, now he thought about it.  
  
There was a desk in the corner that looked wrong. The rug didn't fit in properly. He couldn't put everything back into place, but he had enough impressions to guess they'd taken the liberty to rearrange quite a bit. Beneath ' _what the hell is up with the couch ???'_ in his notebook he wrote ' _what's with the desk'_ and ' _check out the bedroom'_. He closed it again and wandered away from the sign.  
  
The kitchen space was as small as he had remembered, but that didn't mean it left him untouched or unaffected. The little rows of spices, still on their metal rail, were such a tiny detail that he was taken off guard by how hard they hit him. The wallpaper shone with renewed color. The radio was on - Steve was singing along, quietly. A page was turned. The oven pinged. It was home.  
  
It was almost home.  
  
The color drained away and he turned his back on the small surface, the oven, the dirty walls and the spice.  
  
_'Steve used to sing,_ ' he scribbled in his notebook, and tugged his cap down.  
  
He was gone before the tour began.  
  
  
He didn't sleep much; half out of choice, because it was safer to stay up and keep an eye out, half because his dreams weren't close to bearable. If he did dose off there was little luck that he'd wake up happily the next morning fully rested and ready to hit the streets. His nocturnal interruptions were usually screams of some sort, a lot of sweat, a handful of swears, someone's name or face flashing before his eyes. For once horror was not what pushed him back into consciousness. His eyes cracked open with no prior warning, and he shot up, hit with clear realization that couldn't be more mundane.  
  
"The desk was missing a lamp," he stated with renewed conviction, and went to write that down.  
  
  
He went back to the apartment two more times, each visit bringing back a new fresh batch of memories. Or revelations that the people who'd put together this museum were complete uninformed idiots. He was sure, absolutely certain, that he'd heard the guide tell an unknowing visitor about how Captain Rogers and Sergent Barnes listened to vinyls all day long. He'd, for once, bitten his tongue, and had resisted telling the guy that those hadn't been invented; not when they'd lived, not before the ice. Historical accuracy wasn't even what drove him most up the wall, and he was discovering a slightly petty side of himself.  
  
On his third visit his tongue untied and his annoyance - or was it amusement ? - started to slip out. It probably wasn't for the best, since he was supposed to be keeping a low profile, but chances he would be recognized were scarce. Plus he really, really wanted to give these people a piece of his mind.  
  
"...and on this coffee table is the original phonograph that they used," the tour guide was saying, looking mighty sure of himself. "See, some records are still inside, some classic 1940's jams that -"  
  
"False," Bucky said, voice so hoarse with disuse the word was almost impossible to understand. Nonetheless a few heads turned at the interruption. He shrugged lightly and looked at the ground as he continued. "It's...false. That's not true."  
  
The tour guide was looking at his group with the traditional Who Does This Guy Think He Is ? look on his face. "Well, I... How would you know ?"  
  
Bucky struggled for a few seconds, thinking of a way to explain things without making things seem strange. "Phonographs were mighty fashionable at the time, but they were also expensive. With a war going on, dance halls could afford them but individual household owners less. So, yeah, we - _they_ didn't have one."  
  
The small cluster of people nodded in understanding - although it didn't mean much; he could have told them Steve did routine handstands while yelling the national anthem and they would have nodded wisely - and the guide decided he might as well go with the flow. He moved his group away from the coffee table, after having given Bucky a nastily cold glare. He let them walk off, feeling half irked, half entertained, and decided he might as well hold it in until the place had cleared out.  
  
It only took fifteen minutes for the last person to leave the room and finally he was free to walk and talk as he pleased. Speaking to himself wasn't...well, it wasn't the most overwhelming mark of sanity but he needed it out. He needed it to be true. Besides there was no one there to listen, contradict or judge.  
  
So off he went.  
  
"There was a lamp on that desk," he stated first to nothing or no one in particular. "A yellow lamp which only worked during the summer. The bulb broke and Steve kept it for...sentimental value." Jesus, the man had been an idiot of another kind. Perhaps that's why they'd made such a good duo.  
  
"The rug," he continued, as if he was giving the room a commented before-and-after talk, "was under the drawers right there. On the drawers there was our radio - because we listened to the damn radio, not the fucking phonograph..."  
  
"That picture was over there, not near the clock; which isn't even in the right place, either... Those cupboards were never that clean, we never took the time to wipe them. The cups weren't in the top left one, because Steve couldn't reach it, God, he could never reach and I'd..." he trailed off softly, distracted by the open door to the bedroom (also thankfully empty).  
  
Another room, another speech's worth of surprises.  
  
He took the time to snort before going off on this one. "There was one bed, not two !" he said a little too loud, mildly offended by the change. This one wasn't benign or unimportant, they'd... "They actually moved our bed out and put two single ones in instead... Why ?" He hopelessly raised his hands, only to let them fall back down and slap against his thighs. This was pitiful. This wasn't close to their house. This was a somewhat more heterosexual, more idealized version of what had been two men sharing a home. It wasn't what it had been.  
  
Shaking his head and feeling a slight growl coming on, he left the bedroom and shouted for the one new visitor to hear that "The couch was never that ugly, damn it !"  
  
And he was so wrapped up in the inaccuracies that he barely realized how much he was remembering at last.  
  
  
  
"Steve, man, you gotta have a look at this."  
  
The blond set down his cup of coffee and scraped his chair back to join Sam in front of the computer screen he was peering at with what seemed like great enjoyment (if his chuckled whisper of 'Jesus, would ya look at that !' was anything to go by).  
  
"What am I looking at ?" he asked his friend, pretty much at loss at to what was so important about footage of a man apparently yelling in a museum.  
  
"Hold on, wait until he turns his head..." Sam said, barely biting back a shit-eating grin. "Just give him a sec !"  
  
The head turned and Steve's senses dialed up to twelve as soon as he recognized Bucky.  
  
"Where and when is this ?" he asked urgently, already reaching for the phone to call for backup. "Is he himself or is he the Winter Soldier this time ?" _Is it my Bucky or the other guy ?_  
  
"It's live, man," Sam told him. "Steve Rogers' Pre-War Residence. Steve Rogers Museum. Whatever, it's your old flat. And to answer your other question, well... I don't think the Winter Soldier would get so worked up over a couch."  
  
_'The couch was never that ugly, damn it !'_ the footage looped, and Sam zoomed in on the extreme look of frustration on Bucky's face, cackling. From what he could see from the security cameras, Steve had to admit he was right - never would they have had furniture like that.  
  
"Cancel backup," he said, and fished his sunglasses out of his breast pocket. "He's in hiding; if we show up armed and have agents swarming on the roof he'll run. It took us long enough to find him in the first place - I don't want to lose him again."  
  
Sam sighed, but nodded. "Alright man. Let's go get your boyfriend."

Steve didn't bother objecting.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading ! Feedback is most welcome.  
> I might write a sequel (to narrate what happens when Steve goes after him), feel free to tell me if I should or not.  
> Good day !


End file.
